Week 6

In Action Around the Edges Douglas Crimp begins by writing about his moving from an apartment in Greenwich Village to one in Tribeca. I was at first confused why Crimp was writing about moving to a new apartment, until a little further into the reading when one learns that the article is all about the reusing of spaces. Crimp was himself moving into a loft that had been converted form a commercial space to a residence. Not only was he himself participating in the reuse of the old industrialized parts of New York City, but also he was concerned with his “spatial implementation” of moving out ofwhat he referred to as the gay scene to the art scene. He felt by surrounding himself with people from the art scene this would allow himself to be more serious about being an art critic. I question this notion that living in an area recognized by society or those within the city as an artist neighborhood, or neighborhood that somehow embodies the art scene makes one more of an artist or knowledgeable about the arts. Crimp himself suggests that his move was a failure of sorts. This notion that the “area” or neighborhood one lives in defines you so thoroughly is one that is very prevalent in Chicago, not that I agree with it. It is widely accepted that the neighborhood of Boys Town is a gay neighborhood, Wicker Park is a hip young neighborhood, that some would consider to be an art scene neighborhood, though it has become less and less of one as years have passed, and new neighborhoods take that title such asPilsen and Bridgeport. What Crimp really focuses on though is the artists’ resourceful use of the industrial areas of New York City in the1970s. Crimp starts with Gordon Matta-Clark’s work and describes it as the city itself, and that he shows the city “simultaneously as neglected and usable, as dilapidated and beautiful, as loss and possibility. Matta-Clark worked with abandoned structures and looked for emptiness within the city that he could use as his canvas of sorts. Other artists that Crimp writes about all have this quality of emptiness of the city, abandonment in their work. Crimp mentions photographers Bernard Guillot, Peter Hujar, and Cindy Sherman who all managed to create an image of New York city that seemed with out people and empty. Then Crimp brings up the work of Louise Lawler who created a sound piece of loud bird like noises that she made when walking through the area near the Hudson River pier to feel safer. This reminded me of Jane Jacobs’s theory that the more people mingling in an area the safer it would be. The pier space that Matta-Clark and other artists were using as their canvases was also a placethat many gay men utilized for a place to sunbathe and cruise. I thought of photographer Doug Ischar’s work Marginal Waters, where he photographed the area Belmont rocks along Lake Michigan in Chicago that was a popular sunbathing spot for gay men in the 1980s. Now the area like the pier in New York has since been destroyed. Culture Class: Art, Creativity, Urbanism begins to discuss the link between art and urbanism. Martha Rosler writes that she is going to explore the position that Richard Florida an urban studies theorist, takes by creating the term “creative class” and how this has played a role in shaping our cities. What Roslar really writes about, in what seems to be an introduction to more writing, is what role culture, particularly the arts has played in shaping the postwar city. Once the industrial parts of the city were unnecessary and the identity of the city itself was no longer that of industry what was it then? This new idenity of the city was not going to be onethat included the working class that had populated the city during the height of industrialization. Cities were now being created to cater to the middle and upper classes. What took place would later be called gentrification, the large purchases of homes in need of remodeling, was a way for neighborhoods to be redeveloped, but this forced out the poor. Many of these areas were perfect for the artist who wanted a large loft space. It is very easy to trace back through the process of gentrification of a neighborhood and see that it begins many times with artists. The idea of artists moving into neighborhoods cities deemed in need ofredevelopment was embraced by city officials as a way to shape a city culturally while driving out the working class and poor.

Though I found Rosalyn Deutsche’s Evictions Art and Spatial Politics, a tough read that I am not quite sure I fully understand I will give this a try. Deutsche is trying to investigate the relationships between contemporary art, space, and political struggles. She goes about doing this by showing how ideas about art are combined with theories on social and public space. In the first section of her book she explores the social function of art within urbanism, and how art is beneficial to the urban environment. Deutsche examines how space is political and the struggle over that space. I was reminded of the project that occurs all over the world once a year called PARK(ing) Day. People go to a metered parking spot in a city and create a park within the confines of the space for people to utilize for the time that it is up. In Deutsche’s essay Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Homeless Projection and the Site of Urban ‘Revitalization’, she looks at how things like parks and historic preservation of buildings were used as disguises of the ugly parts of urban redevelopment, that was really gentrification. She goes on in subsequent essays to discuss the role public art had on public space, such as beautifying, being socially responsible and functional. In her essay Property Values: Hans Haacke, Real Estate, and the Museum Deutsche discusses the work of Haacke’s that was meant to be shown at the Guggenheim Museum is 1971, but was canceled at the last minute. The piece was of photographs of numerous tenement buildings and empty lots in sums of New York City, as well as charts laying out real estate transactions, which showed connections between some of the museum’s board of trustees. Deutsche saw the work’s censorship as an example of the museums’ exclusionary qualities and how institutions such as the Guggenheim have created the slum environment through numerous actions. Not only that but the museum art environment, such as artists, galleries, and the building of museums raised rents in this slum areas forcing people out of their homes.